Best Of 2025
2025 has been a decade of a year, but with the help of some truly great music and you, we made it through. Join us on a year-end extravaganza as we celebrate our favorite releases, thoughts on where the industry is headed, and more.
Best Of 2025
10.
This Is The Last I'll Speak On It, I Swear
Miri Tyler
Multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Miri Tyler — between touring as part of Ekko Astral and releasing her main band Pretty Bitter’s remarkable album Pleaser — has had an incredibly stacked year. But it may be her latest solo album that is cause for the biggest fanfare. Released quietly, without any big PR push, This Is The Last I'll Speak On It, I Swear is a collection of songs that speaks to our times as much as it does the music that has informed Tyler’s songwriting.
Figuring out who you are, how to love, and even how to fight fascism are all familiar subjects if you’ve been following Tyler’s career to date. The stories here touch on all of these once again, while being shot through with an ageless weird American/weird folk sound that feels not just new for Tyler but invigorating in the music scene of 2025. Echoes of Jenny Lewis, Eliot Smith, and even Shannon Hoon (not the bee song guys, we’re talking about Soup here) drift in and out of these often hilarious explorations of the self, but it all adds up to a voice that is uniquely Tyler’s.
Pretty Bitter may have put her on the map, and we hope to be hearing from them for a lonnnnng time to come, but between this and last year’s Memo, the evidence is mounting that Tyler is evolving into not just a generationally great songwriter, but the generationally great songwriter that the world needs right now. A triumph of what someone can achieve if they just speak from the heart, This Is The Last I'll Speak On It, I Swear is a record that people will be discovering and celebrating for years to come. — Kevin
9.
honey from a winter stone
Ambrose Akinmusire
On his third album in two years, trumpeter and composer Ambrose Akinmusire continues to solidify his status as one of the premier jazz musicians of our time, a legend in the making. Following the gorgeous tranquility of 2023’s Beauty Is Enough (48 minutes of solo trumpet!) and the triumph of his collaboration with Bill Frisell and drummer Herlin Riley on last year's Owl Song would be a daunting task for anyone. Akinmusire’s seemingly limitless depth and creativity, however, make honey from a winter stone, featuring Kokayi on improvised vocals, Sam Harris on piano, a string quartet, and more, an album that feels like the perfect next step for one of modern jazz’s brightest stars. With echoes of Miles Davis’s innovation and undertones of Lonnie Holley’s soulful avant-garde, the album offers a compelling entry point into his fantastically diverse catalog. — Kevin
8.
Baby Man
Fruit Bats
In 2019, Eric D. Johnson signed his newly resurrected Fruit Bats to Merge Records, kicking off a new phase — a Johnsonaissance, if you will — of an already remarkable career. Since then, he’s released three (or four, if you count his 2020 reinterpretation of Siamese Dream), critically acclaimed records on the label, become one-third of the folk supergroup Bonnie Light Horseman, and toured relentlessly. Last year, he even curated his own mini-festival, My Sweet Midwest, in Chicago, featuring Kevin Morby and Hurray for the Riff Raff.
Which is why Baby Man might come as a surprise. Instead of going bigger, Johnson stripped his songwriting down to the studs.
A collection of ten songs that frequently feel like they barely exist, Baby Man features some of the most honest and exhilarating songwriting of Johnson’s career. Often just piano or guitar and voice, the album explores themes of self-doubt, existential wonder, and first loves with startling clarity, going full galaxy-brain on his themes while remaining remarkably intimate and of this world. — Kevin
7.
Deck
Hallelujah The Hills
In March 2020, Hallelujah the Hills set out to tour their most recent release - I'm You, one of the great releases of 2019 - only to run headfirst into a pandemic wall. Their most recent release, DECK, picks up where I'm You left off, both sonically and lyrically. The 54 songs spread across four albums and an EP work like little vignettes and character sketches, equal parts scruffy, shouty, sweet, and sad. DECK is a sprawling and ambitious work, stacked with a roster of A-list guests, that asks the listener to rethink what an album is. Conceptual hullabaloo aside, the songs on DECK continually astound; just as David Berman made rural Virginia into an archetypal place we could all visit, this is an album that allows you to be in love with Massachusetts even if you've never set foot in New England. — Eduardo
6.
light rivers
Brad Allen Williams
On his follow‑up to the wild sonic daydream of 2023’s œconomy, guitarist and composer Brad Allen Williams continues to peer into the future of music from the deck of a jazz‑fusion-powered rocket ship of sound. The journey that light rivers charts across this limitless universe cruises through R&B galaxies, Cassiopeian constellations, and prog‑rock wormholes, yet never feels like Williams or his all‑star band are showing off. A love not only for the power of music but for its potential shines through every note. Whether it’s jams from some far‑flung sickest of futures (“laika”) or the beautifully maudlin end credits to an imagined 70’s sci‑fi flick (“lux”), Light Rivers is an essential trip for music fans of all kinds to take. — Kevin
5.
Winged Victory
Willi Carlisle
2024’s Critterland invited listeners into the places Willi Carlisle’s songs are born: the road, the kitchens of strangers, and the quiet moments spent learning other people’s stories. On his latest, Winged Victory, Carlisle brings a clear-eyed focus to the only struggle that has animated human history: the struggle between the have’s and the have-not’s. Through eleven songs that are often laugh-out-loud funny, Willi draws wisdom, beauty, and grace from characters and stories that are both universal and singularly American. As the news cycle wavers from gruesome to worse, these characters are defiant and timeless, and they may have a lot to tell us about how we can see our way through the bleakest of times. — Eduardo
4.
Clementine
Ladybird
Barely a year ago, Milwaukee country-rock outfit Ladybird crashed onto the scene with Amy Come On Home. Amy was listeners’ first introduction to chief songwriter Pete McDermott’s vision of a “Midwestern South”, a universe steeped in musical tradition (think ’90s alt-country/Drive-By Truckers) and populated with stories and characters that felt familiar, yet just askew of the world we live in.
On Clementine, the now five-piece (with Will Hansen, aka Old Pup, officially joining on pedal steel) expands that universe — and the richness of their storytelling — to deliver an instant classic along the lines of Wilco’s A.M. or Old 97’s Too Far to Care. Part of that comes from a sharper focus on (lost) love songs — there’s a genuine sweetness to these protagonists, even when they recognize they may be screwups — injected with a slightly more refined sense of humor.
Drive-By Truckers, arguably Ladybird’s biggest influence, created worlds like this early on. It’s what makes records like Southern Rock Opera, Decoration Day, and The Dirty South so enduring. Ladybird is now on track to pull off the same trick. But where the Truckers’ universe often dwelled in the seedy, dark underbelly of the modern South, Ladybird leans toward the light on Clementine, granting their subjects — and their songs — some grace, on the off chance that they may someday soar. — Kevin
3.
Animaru
Mei Semones
Mei Semones made waves with her 2024 EP Kabutomoshi, earning widespread acclaim, including praise from Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. With her follow-up and debut full-length, Animaru, the guitarist and singer-songwriter doesn’t just build on that initial blast of joy, she delivers a generationally great album, one listeners will be continuing to marvel at for years to come. Across its lean 38-minute runtime, Bossa Nova, bop-era jazz, and Smashing Pumpkins-inspired alt-rock fuse into something entirely new. But the real triumph is Semones’ lyrical exploration of love in all its forms, sung in both English and Japanese, creating a world of infinite joy for listeners to lose themselves in. Much like Rabbit Fur Coat did nearly 20 years ago, Animaru redefines what once felt familiar, marking the first must-hear, undeniably game-changing album of the decade. — Kevin
2.
Pleaser
Pretty Bitter
When you hear singer Emelia Blekerask ask “what happens to a body when it’s scared?” in the middle of “Thrill-Eater”, the second track on Pretty Bitter’s pretty terrific new album Pleaser, you’re going to feel some feelings - especially if you’re walking around an occupied Washington, DC, the city the band calls home . Pleaser is both polished and earnest, and it’s about more than just the present moment, as one of DC’s raddest young bands has a contemplative and mature moment and gives us a record that will be fun to age with. — Eduardo
1.
Spider Towns
Old Pup
The ghostly guitars that open Old Pup's Spider Towns invite you into a likely haunted house and quietly shut the door behind you. Along with an all-star cast of up-and-coming Milwaukee alt-country stars and folk freaks (and album art from Ryan Davis) bandleader and chief songwriter Will Hansen builds on the Lynchian notion of the Midwest, delivering a perfectly realized weird-Americana universe.
Hansen's characters get high and ponder a universe where everything that has and will happen is happening at once, skip lesson plans in favor of showing the class a film because they're hungover, and find themselves in other mildly degenerate situations. These vignettes feel relatable and human even as the music scaffolding these tales drifts in and out of the corners of the ether from different times, places, and dimensions.
When David Lynch passed earlier this year, the line "Now it’s dark" from his film Blue Velvet made its way into most eulogies and remembrances. Spider Towns serves as a reminder that while it may be dark, perhaps the light hasn’t gone out just yet. — Kevin
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